© Stephen Dupont.

Photographer Stephen Dupont is of a rare breed. He infiltrated a raskol community, and documented the rough and ruthless individuals involved in Papua New Guinea’s gang life. His new book, Raskols: The Gangs of Papua New Guinea, presents formal portraits of members of the Kips Kaboni (Scar Devils), Papua New Guinea’s oldest criminal gang. Dupont set up a makeshift studio inside the Kips Kaboni safe house, where he photographed his subjects and their unique handmade weapons and firearms. These mostly young, unemployed men orchestrate raids, carjackings and robberies as a means of survival. The gangs control the streets. Despite the crime and violence they have unleashed on their city, some view them as modern-day Robin Hoods. With a corrupt government and police force, every day in Port Moresby is survival of the fittest. Many of these raskols initially turned to crime, violence, and anarchy as a way to protect and provide for themselves and their communities. Raskols: The Gangs of Papua New Guinea, is published by powerHouse Books.

Dupont is an Australian photographer and filmmaker who primarily photographs fragile cultures and marginalized peoples. A recipient of the 2007 W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography and the 2010 Gardner Fellowship at Harvard’s Peabody Museum for his work on Papua New Guinea, his photographs and handmade artist books are in the Collections of the Library Of Congress, the New York Public Library and the National Gallery of Australia, among others. He is a member of the New York City-based agency Contact Press Images and the Brooklyn Artists Alliance, and lives with his family in Austinmer, Australia. – Courtesy powerHouse Books

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© Mikki Ansin. Above:  Susan Sarandon between takes. Beautiful, fun loving, politically wonderful, talented, great to work with and irreverent.

For close to 40 years, Mikki Ansin has worked as a still photographer on movie sets. While fulfilling the job requirements for Hollywood studios and independent productions alike, she became fascinated with documenting behind-the-scenes activity, most notably in the production of Merchant Ivory films. “The pay may have been less, but they let me do what I wanted,” Ansin says. “I took pictures of the stars with their feet up and their hair down, of the cast and crew at play — from the softball field to the set. I’ve always been captivated by how things happen.”

Ansin is one of 20 distinguished ASMP members whose work is featured in the newly redesigned Best of ASMP 2012 issue of the ASMP Bulletin, which is hot off the press. Click here for extended interviews with Ansin and the other Best of ASMP photographers.

-courtesy of Jill Waterman, Editor of ASMP Bulletin.

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© Peter Liu

Peter Liu wears many hats. He spent years working in the tech-driven world of Silicon Valley, California, and is now a tech and social media consultant in Hawaii. But he also has a passion for photography, so after becoming a certified scuba diver in the 1990s, he started diving with a digital camera in order to capture underwater creatures. The image above was taken while diving at Carlos Beach in Monterey, California. “This particular shot was a fluke that occurred on the way back from a dive,” Liu says. “One of my strobe arms got wrapped around a strand of kelp and I was untangling it when I turned around and noticed these curious sea lions following me back. I took the opportunity and pressed the shutter, even though the camera was still tangled and I didn’t have time to really frame the shot or get the settings right. It was terribly underexposed. It took some doing to coax the shot out later in Photoshop, but it was well worth it. The accidental composition is priceless.”

All photos © Hiroki Kobayashi

When the tsunami and earthquake struck Japan last March, Japanese photographer Hiroki Kobayashi was living in New York City. During the months that followed, he relied on news and media outlets to stay up to date on his home country. Yet he still found himself confused about what was happening on the ground, so when an assignment came along that would take him to Japan, he hoped traveling to the northeastern coast would help him better understand the situation. What he saw both surprised and inspired him.

In the town of Minami-Sanriku he met a group of fisherman who had banded together in order to help one another survive. They were all still living in temporary shelters. Yet they were sharing the two remaining fishing boats that were still sea-worthy, and dividing their earnings amongst one another. “Even though these fishermen lost their homes and so much of their livelihood, they look to the future with a positive and inspirational resolve,” Kobayashi says, adding that this optimism is often missing in the news reported by the mainstream media.

The resulting work, “Altered Land,” was recently exhibited at FiveMyles gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Kobayashi’s series “Slave Theater,” which documents a Brooklyn building with a storied history, will be exhibited in Japan next month and the BRIC Rotunda Gallery in 2013.

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© Alexander Semenov

As head of the scientific diver’s team at the White Sea Biological Station in northwestern Russia, marine biologist Alexander Semenov has been studying—and photographing—the life cycle of Cyanea capillata, aka the lion’s mane jellyfish. The creatures only live for about six months, usually from May to September, but grow to a diameter of two to three meters with tentacles as long as 36 meters. “I’m trying to study marine life through the lenses, and from year-to-year I get more and more knowledge about the underwater world of cold waters of the north,” Semenov says.